House GOP leaders spring new bill on lawmakers

Like the sun rising in the east, you can count on something odd coming up the last days of each Legislature.

Tuesday morning, House GOP leaders sprung a new bill on lawmakers: One that would require the 200-plus attorneys in Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's office to give up their much-desired merit/no-fire status to accept larger pay raises this year.

"I absolutely, violently oppose this," a shocked Shurtleff said in the hallway outside of the House chambers, as he ran upstairs to find out what lawmakers were doing to him at the last minute. Legislators adjourn at midnight Wednesday.

While discussions about AG pay raises vs. merit status have been held in past years, Shurtleff said he was not warned by House Majority Whip Jeff Alexander, R-Orem, who will carry the new bill, that the issue was coming up this year.

Shurtleff is a Republican. And it's clear that some GOP lawmakers believe that "closet" Democrats work for him since they were hired during the 12 years that Democrats held the top law enforcement job before Shurtleff's 2000 election.

"I have no problems" with the personal politics of any of his assistant attorney generals, said Shurtleff. "Hey, I was an assistant attorney general" in a previous Democratic AG's administration. "So were most of my top directors now. I don't know what (his staffers') politics are, I don't care. They're professionals who deserve raises."

It appears, some lawmakers said, that there could be some opposition to Shurtleff's constant comparing of his attorneys' salaries to those paid to the Legislature's own attorneys in the Office of Legislative Research and General Council.

Several years ago, legislative leaders quietly gave their top attorneys large pay raises, some reaching 33 percent.

After those legislative bill-writers' raises became public in a Deseret Morning News story, Shurtleff renewed his arguments that his attorneys have fallen way behind in pay. And there was talk then of AG attorneys giving up their merit status in return for big pay hikes.

"If we got 23 percent pay raises then we could talk about" giving up merit status, Shurtleff, citing the average pay gap between his attorneys and legislative attorneys with the same experience.

"But when we asked our attorneys several years ago if they would give up merit status for parity most said no."

But lawmakers aren't offering parity with their own attorneys for Shurtleff's staff, just a step in that direction, said Shurtleff.